the basics. And to stake a near-impenetrable perimeter around their parents’ incessant
nagging. At that age, Aylin Langreuter was in Munich, working a kitchen gig that
happened to be inside one of the most iconic establishments in the world, Schumann’s
American Bar on Maximilianstrase. Those
late nights slicing lemons and prosciutto in
the presence of the very debonair proprietor, Charles Schumman, would eventually,
unexpectedly stretch into a captivating
scheme with a design collective known as
Dante–Goods and Bads.

In 2011 Langreuter, an exhibiting artist
and graphic designer, and Christophe de
la Fontaine, an industrial designer who
worked for designers Piero Lissoni and
Patricia Uriqiola, were living in Milan. They
were inspired but ravenous for objects that
weren’t a strictly functional offspring. They
wanted pieces that were steeped in other
striking intangibles—things that reverberated moods, places and sensations, not
just a stroll through the dewy backyard of
nostalgia. Sneaking up on the line dividing art and design, the pair founded Dante and
went on an aesthetic crusade into the wilds of context.

Rather than unleash more work into the world, Langreuter and de la Fontaine invited a
tastemaker, someone to harness their point of view and, undoubtedly, make the trip more
interesting. “We find a guest, the guest gives us an emotional world, a theme, and we
then follow that to wherever it may take us,” says Langreuter. “It works much like a chain
of associations. You find a starting point and then one thing leads you to the next: a fabric,
a song, a piece of food, a quotation, a talisman. And that’s what we try to convey to our
contributors as well: to freely associate a theme.”